The Marques de Garrigues, who has died aged 100, was, as Antonio
Garrigues y Díaz-Cañabate, Franco's ambassador to America during
the presidency of John F Kennedy; he also served in the Republican government
which preceded Franco's regime, and in the cabinet after the restoration of
the monarchy.

He was, though, briefly more widely talked about in connection
with J F K's widow Jackie, who was said to be highly susceptible to his charm.

Garrigues had been close to the Kennedys since Joe Kennedy,
the future President's elder brother, visited Madrid during the Spanish Civil
War, and he cemented the friendship during his time in Washington, when he regularly
dined at the White House. In the years after the assassination of J F K, he
was one of those whom Jackie Kennedy dropped in on as she dashed between the
continents.

In January 1966 she stayed with Garrigues, then a widower with
eight children, in Rome, where he was serving as Spain's Ambassador to the Vatican.
She went on a spree of shopping and parties with the Roman nobility, pursued
everywhere by paparazzi, and when Irene Galitzine's sempstresses worked through
the night to make her a black dress for an unscheduled visit to the Pope, it
set off rumours that Mrs Kennedy intended to marry her handsome Spanish host.

Over the next few months the speculation, reported in the European
press, refused to die down, and when she stepped off the plane in Madrid en
route to the feria in Seville, hundreds reporters yelled questions about the
nature of her friendship with Garrigues.

On April 20, when she returned to Madrid on her way back from
Seville, the American Ambassador to Spain, Angier Biddle Duke, called an impromptu
press conference: "On behalf of Mrs Kennedy," he said, "I wish
to make it crystal clear and completely understood that there is no basis in
fact to the rumours of an engagement."

Garrigues himself said nothing publicly about their relationship,
encouraging yet more persistent rumours.

Antonio Garrigues y Diaz-Canabate was born in Madrid on January
9 1904, one of five sons of a prosperous lawyer who was widowed when Antonio
was a boy. After graduating top of his year at Madrid's Central University,
he worked at his father's law firm until 1931, when he was appointed director-general
of registries and notaries in the justice ministry under the provisional government
of the Republic.

In the same year he married Helen Walker, from Des Moines,
Iowa, daughter of a senior executive in the American multi-national ITT. She
was to bear him 11 children, three of whom died in infancy, before she died
in 1944.

In the 1930s Garrigues had a hand in the founding of the Catholic
journal Cruz y Raya, and during the Civil War he was one of the "Fifth-Columnists"
who supported Franco's cause through sabotage and propaganda. During Joe Kennedy's
visit, Garrigues tore around the city streets with him, distributing subversive
literature. When their car was pulled over by the militia, he got away with
the explanation that he was showing around a foreign friend.

After the civil war Garrigues concentrated on expanding his
law firm, which was later remodelled as a partnership along Anglo-Saxon lines.

For foreign companies seeking to expand into Spain, Garrigues,
a frequent transatlantic traveller, quickly became their lawyer of choice. He
meanwhile abstained from active politics, but argued for a more liberal dictatorship
and was a confirmed supporter of Don Juan, the exiled son of King Alfonso XIII.

In March 1962 Garrigues received an unexpected summons to become
Spanish Ambassador to the United States, where he was able to use his former
friendship with J F K's late brother Joe as an entree into the President's inner
circle, and to see through the difficult renewal of the military and economic
accord between the two countries in 1963.

The next year he was posted to the Holy See, where he renegotiated
the agreements between the Spanish government and the Catholic Church following
the Second Vatican Council. A devout Catholic who for many years had been an
agnostic, Garrigues was broadly in agreement with Vatican II's liberalising
changes, despite the stiff resistance they met in conservative quarters at home.

Around this time he was also involved in some early reformist
initiatives within the Spanish establishment, contributing to a draft revision
of the Francoist constitution, which found no favour with his superiors in Madrid.

On his return to Spain in 1972, Garrigues resumed his law practice
and his other commercial interests. His firm became one of the largest in Europe,
with 1,200 partners, and was a vital facilitator of the foreign investment that
modernised Spain's economy and transformed its social fabric.

He also chaired some of the country's largest businesses, including
the broadcasting company SER and Citroen Hispania, and published several books
on philosophy, theology, culture and current affairs.

After Franco's death in 1975, Garrigues was appointed justice
minister in the new government. He was seen as one of the more liberal members
of an administration that, for all King Juan Carlos I's democratic leanings,
was weakly led by Carlos Arias Navarro in the face of reactionary pressures
from the "bunker" of the old regime.

Garrigues stood down after seven months, disenchanted with
the failure to achieve a broader range of political liberties. His main achievement
was the repeal of the repressive laws under which Franco had sent political
opponents to face the firing squad. His son Joaquin later served as minister
for public works in the government led by Adolfo Suarez, of the Union of the
Democratic Centre, while the father returned to business, remaining active for
many years.

His publications included Dialogues With Myself (1978); Thoughts
on Things that Happen (1984); and, among several books of poetry, At the Crossroads
in Rome (1986).

In January, on the eve of Garrigues's 100th birthday, King
Juan Carlos raised him to the nobility as the Marques de Garrigues. He held
many other honours besides.

Active until the last, he died peacefully at his Madrid home
on February 24. His elder son Antonio, head of the family law firm, succeeds
him as Marques; another son and four daughters also survive him.